5 Old Hollywood Scandals You Forgot About

Between tabloid magazines and 24/7 celebrity news coverage, it seems as if there's a never-ending flow of celebrity drama these days. But long before social media, and even before many of those celeb magazines existed, there was no shortage of A-list scandals in Hollywood. Here are some of the juiciest Old Hollywood scandals that are just as jaw-dropping to read about today as they were back then.

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1Charlie Chaplin's Teenage Brides

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Charlie Chaplin's work in the silent film industry made him one of the most famous classic film stars of all time, but his love life was riddled with controversy. The film star was married four times throughout his life, and each of his wives was significantly younger than he was—in fact, three out of his four brides were under 18 when they tied the knot. His second marriage, to 16-year-old Lita Gray, might have been his most controversial because of their very public and very messy divorce. The 50-page divorce document detailed Chaplin's abusive tendencies towards his wife of three years, including the allegation that he demanded Lita get an abortion shortly after they wed. The heated court battle fueled the controversy, making their divorce one of the biggest scandals of the 1920s.

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2Elizabeth Taylor's Affair with Eddie Fisher

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It's no secret that Elizabeth Taylor has been married several times (eight, to be exact), but perhaps one of her most buzzed about relationships was with Eddie Fisher. Taylor struck up a romantic relationship with Fisher after her third husband, Mike Todd, passed away in a plane crash. (Fisher, on the left in photo above, was a good friend of Todd, seen on the right.) Their courtship sparked major headlines because Fisher was still married to actress Debbie Reynolds, who was a friend of Taylor's. Fisher eventually divorced Reynolds in order to marry Taylor, but that marriage soon ended in divorce, too, when Taylor left him for Richard Burton.

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3Death at the Hollywood Sign

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At just 24 years old, actress Peg Entwistle felt like a failure. The actress had appeared in several Broadway plays, but she was hoping to make it big as a movie star. Struggling to stand out among the many screen sirens at the time, Entwistle was devastated when her first big role, in David O. Selznick's Thirteen Women, was cut from the final film. Overwhelmed with grief, she climbed up the ladder of the Hollywood sign (which said "Hollywoodland" at the time) and jumped to her death from the letter "H." A hiker discovered her body two days later, along with he suicide note found in her purse, which read, "I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. P.E."

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4Twilight Zone: The Movie Helicopter Crash

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Twilight Zone: The Movie, a 1983 compilation of horror stories inspired by the popular TV series, took a horribly tragic turn during director Jon Landis's segment of the movie. In July 1982, Landis was directing a Vietnam war scene that involved actor Vic Morrow's character saving two Vietnamese children by carrying them across a river. However, things went awry when the on-set pyrotechnics collided with a low-flying helicopter that was also part of the scene. The chopper lost control, plummeting into the river and killing Morrow and the two children instantly. "I went into shock for four or five hours. I didn't know what to feel," Morrow's daughter, actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, said at the time.

Almost a decade's worth of legal action followed, as the director and crew were charged with manslaughter. (Landis had actually violated California labor laws by having the kids working so late.) The crew was eventually acquitted, but the incident made its mark on Hollywood history. Movies now have much stricter safety regulations in place, and each film must have a risk consultant evaluate movie sets before filming.

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5Natalie Wood's Mysterious Death

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Natalie Wood was an immensely talented Hollywood treasure. Before the age of 24, she already had three Oscar nominations, and was best known for her work in West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause. But Natalie tragically passed away when she was just 43, while sailing with her husband, Robert Wagner, off California's Catalina Island. The specific circumstances of her death, which was ruled an accident at first, have remained a mystery ever since. In 2011, the ship's captain, Dennis Davern, admitted he had lied to police, failing to reveal an argument the couple had the night she died. Since then, her cause of death has been changed to "undetermined."

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